A little off-topic but cannot resist posting about a Clausing drill press I recently fetched from a surplus dealer in New Mexico. His semi trailers and buildings stuffed with artifacts from various Los Alamos-type auctions. I am always curious about the history of things, this one has an inventory tag "E G & G Special Projects Division".
So I got to wondering who E G & G is, and what exactly "Special Projects" meant and discovered that during the 1950s and 1960s, EG&G was involved in nuclear tests as a major contractor for the Atomic Energy Commission. EG&G made extensive use of the Nevada Test Site (NTS) for weapons development and high-technology military testing at Nellis AFB. They were involved in contracting services to the United States government during World War II and conducted weapons research and development after the war... (i.e., nukes) involvement with some of the government's most sensitive technologies ... cited in conspiracy theories related to Department of Defense black projects... dot dot dot
EG&G "Special Projects" also referred to activity at Area 51. According to Wikipedia, EG&G's "Special Projects" division was the notable operator of the Janet Terminal at McCarran International Airport in Las Vegas, NV, a service used to transport employees to remote government locations in Nevada and California! Really? Fascinating, as Spock would say. If this tool could talk.. Now it will help build optical tables for laser projectors, with any luck.
The tool itself is a Clausing 15 with a Procunier tapping attachment that runs on compressed air. These are super good drill presses and definitely made in USA. It weighs about 350 pounds and was probably made in the 60's. This all leads me to conclude that these dudes needed to tap a few holes for a black project or two.
http://area51specialprojects.com/specialprojects.html
http://area51looseends.blogspot.com/...ty-manual.html
http://www.dreamlandresort.com/info/janet.html
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NTPbA4x-9w
OK wait, there's more! ... product of net surfing at 3 am on EG&G Special Projects:
One of the first employees of the new company (EG&G)was Bernard J. O’Keefe, another MIT graduate who had worked for Dr. Grier during the war. O’Keefe served with the 21st Bomber Command in the Mariana Islands during the war, and is said to have personally wired the bomb that later destroyed the Japanese city of Nagasaki.
EG&G was involved in the U.S. effort to build a more powerful nuclear weapon, the hydrogen bomb. That year, Grier and O’Keefe were present at a Nevada test site to personally witness an H-bomb detonation. After the weapon failed to explode, Grier and O’Keefe flipped a coin to determine who should scale the 300-foot test tower and disarm the bomb. Although O’Keefe lost, he won the special distinction of being the first man to disarm a live H-bomb.